A classic and ground-breaking study on sexuality, The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in Papua New Guinea offers much to learn to the beginning student of Anthropology and those interested in understanding other cultures and other configurations of sexual practices. Sexuality was once a tabooed subject and avoided by most, even anthropologists. Gilbert Herdt, having come to age as an Anthropologist during the 1960's, followed in the footsteps of Bronislaw Malinowski's and Margaret Mead's work in Melanesia to produce this study which would lay the ground work for many future anthropologists interested in sexuality.
Herdt's initial difficulty understanding Sambian culture through a Sambia discourse is demonstrated by his initial classification of Sambia as practicing "ritualized homosexuality". Herdt admits that this terminology was ethnocentric in nature: the Sambia themselves did not possess a lexicon to understand that two men or two women could be recognized as partners. It was with this western discourse of sexuality that Herdt had initially mistakenly conceptualized the Sambia, and this highlights the difficulties anthropologist must overcome when studying other cultures. Likewise, Herdt's work is often understood to be evidence that homosexuality, as practiced in the west, is natural. However, there are two inherent problems with this conclusion. On the one hand, it assumes that western cultural is itself unnatural. However, human behavior is always natural, and thus, never in need of a justification for its "naturalness". This conclusion also exploits the idea that tribes such as the Sambia are primitive and in some way more natural due to their less "evolved" and somehow static state. The latter assumption, possessed by social-cultural evolutionists, has been heavily critiqued and out right rejected by anthropologists. Furthermore, to assume that sexual actions constitute a sexual identity, as they do in the west, is to be confined by the definitions of sexuality implemented in the west. As we see in Herdt's ethnography, although the Sambia for a time practice homosexual acts, they would not identify themselves as homosexual. Nonetheless, the Sambia do demonstrate that sexuality varies across time and place, and in this way they give hope to sexual others across the globe who must fight against powerful heteronormative discourses that seek to cast sexual others (in the west, GLBT individuals) as deviant, unnatural, and/or immoral and attempt in some case to persecute them.
Herdt observes that Sambia boys are initiated into manhood by an elaborate series of initiation rites. The secrecy that surrounds these rites is meant to keep the practices, and particularly the one which involves "boy-inseminating", hidden from the Sambia women. Throughout the ethnography, one gets the sense that Sambian men are highly misogynistic. Herdt tells us that the Sambian are constantly at war with their neighbors, and it appears that this misogyny both helps to keep the initiation rites secret and keep the war band of men closely bonded. The practice of boy-inseminating, that which proves the most culturally shocking for the average reader, challenges our understanding of sexuality. All older initiates are to ejaculate after fellatio into the younger boys' mouths, a process that is thought by the Sambia to pass on jerungdu (male strength) to the initiates. The normal practice is for older initiates to engage in this activity with younger ones, and therefore, all Sambian males circulate in and out of these sexual practices. Thus, these periods of homosexuality exist only temporarily, and are not viewed as being part of an adult male's identity. Other rituals include nose bleeding, the ceremony of the flutes, and ritualized beatings, all of which Herdt details at length.
Although women are not part of the secret cult, they nonetheless play a very important role in many of the Sambian men's practices. For example, Jerungdu, as mentioned above, is thought to be in constant decline. Contact with women and ejaculation decrease a man's jerungdu. In this belief, we see how women are cast in conflict with manliness, and this attributes to the misogynist beliefs of the Sambian men. In addition to avoiding women, men of the Sambia consume tree sap in order to replenish their supply of jerungdu. Likewise, the Sambia men are very concerned about the younger men keeping their rituals secret, and it appears as though they are very afraid of the women finding out about their sexual encounters with the boys. This fear of the women in turn spurs many of the rituals and behaviors of the Sambian men. The Sambian men's fear of women suggests that the women are respected in Sambian culture. As a male, Herdt only had access to the male realm (and even then, he speaks about his contested presence in their secret rituals), and thus, we can only indirectly understand the women's world. This dynamic leaves the reader wondering about the women's world and their understanding of them men's realm. Of course, the sex of an ethnographer often places such limitations on the type of study they can produce, and this dynamic gives us an interesting insight to the complex role of insider/outsider the anthropologist must traverse.
The Sambia are neither a static culture nor immune to the impacts of globalization. Herdt notes the changing lifestyles of Sambian individuals as Christianity is brought into their world and individuals begin to desire life in the city as opposed to life in the Sambian village. Luckily for anthropologists and others interested in the social practices of other cultures, Herdt arrived in time to document the now disappearing practices of the Sambia. Like many structuralists, Herdt's ethnography is at times uninterestingly detailed. However, for the intellectually curious, it is a must read.
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
